Graduate Profile: Michele Parkhill Purdie
When Michele Parkhill Purdie ’01 visited Alma College during her senior year of high school, she noticed Gwyneth Beagley, professor of psychology, playing with a lab rat. She immediately became interested in majoring in psychology.
“I always was very interested in the ‘why’ of human behavior, and the mentoring I received from the psychology professors made choosing psychology as my major a very easy choice,” she says.
Since then, Purdie has completed her doctorate in social psychology at Wayne State University and worked as a research scientist at the University of Washington in Seattle.
Now, she is an assistant professor of psychology at Oakland University.
“My Alma education prepared me for almost everything I have faced since graduation,” she says. “I entered graduate school feeling extremely prepared for the rigorous training I was about to receive. Additionally, my experiences at Alma influence the way I mentor and teach my own students.”
With years of education under her lab coat, Purdie is quick to praise close relationships with professors.
“My advice for incoming students is to establish relationships with your professors—all of them!” she says. “I continue to have relationships with mine, and I still draw on them for advice.”
